Advice The Home Improvement/Automation Thread

Soooo I sold my house. Gotta be out of here in 10 days. Then 21 days in limbo and moving into a new place. Moving from where the ocean meets the woods, to where farm country meets a small industrial park.

The new place has infloor oil heat + a ductless heat pump in the main living area. I'm gonna be doing some efficiency upgrades right away - upgrading attic insulation, replacing the air exchanger with a more efficient one, and whatever else has to be done.

What's everyone using for smart thermostats and crap?
 
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Valve1138 said:
Sounds like a downgrade in location.
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Current house is on a hill. Makes for a great view of the ocean, except I don't have a backyard (10 feet behind the house, it's woods going uphill) and my front yard is useless. And my driveway is a downhill walk from the house. Plus we use about half our house - after 12 years there, a view of the ocean from the sunroom is "yup, the ocean's still there"...

And I won't miss "hey neighbor with a kubota, can you come dig another trench for me?", having to fuck around with property drainage. Don't buy a house on a hill. Lesson learned.

The new house is on flat fucking property, with a huge backyard that I can actually do shit with and the dogs are gonna love (holy shit, I can play fetch with a dog without getting in the car and driving somewhere!) and it's got an attached 2 door garage so I can actually start getting up to some projects.

So yeah, location is a bit less pretty but it's a hell of a lot better.
 
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gee said:
Soooo I sold my house. Gotta be out of here in 10 days. Then 21 days in limbo and moving into a new place. Moving from where the ocean meets the woods, to where farm country meets a small industrial park.

The new place has infloor oil heat + a ductless heat pump in the main living area. I'm gonna be doing some efficiency upgrades right away - upgrading attic insulation, replacing the air exchanger with a more efficient one, and whatever else has to be done.

What's everyone using for smart thermostats and crap?
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ecobee. Google fucked the nest by making it non-interoperable with anything except nest.

Also, eww, oil.
 
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Domon said:
ecobee. Google fucked the nest by making it non-interoperable with anything except nest.

Also, eww, oil.
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Oil sucks, but I'll take it over the electric baseboard the current house has.

Napoleon makes a really neat hybrid wood/oil boiler that I'm looking at. Wood heat is cheap as dirt, and oil is there as a seamless backup if I'm away from the house.
 
Valve1138 said:
Inspector shows up finally.

There's 2 more panels on the front roof than there are on the submitted design.

FAIL.


:rolleyes:

"The office will be reaching out to you shortly".

And I will be short with them.
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im guessing its not cause you got bonus panels eh
 
Hmm. Nest E versus ecobee 3 lite.

We're not using alexa or siri in the house, we just have a google home mini in the kitchen, and both of us have android phones. So being locked into the nest ecosystem isn't really a huge issue.

The province will reimburse us $100/thermostat for up to 5 of the things, which is the number of heating zones we have. So if one of those thermostats goes on for $149 CAD or something on black friday, I'm gonna buy a pile of the things.

Shame that we can't tie the ductless heat pump into the system easily.
 
gee said:
Hmm. Nest E versus ecobee 3 lite.

We're not using alexa or siri in the house, we just have a google home mini in the kitchen, and both of us have android phones. So being locked into the nest ecosystem isn't really a huge issue.

The province will reimburse us $100/thermostat for up to 5 of the things, which is the number of heating zones we have. So if one of those thermostats goes on for $149 CAD or something on black friday, I'm gonna buy a pile of the things.

Shame that we can't tie the ductless heat pump into the system easily.
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be aware the ecobee3 lite wont control external devices (whole house fan, humidifier, etc). Also, i dont think it comes with an additional temp sensor. Which is super handy.
 
Yup. Infloor radiant heat throughout the house, spread across 5 zones. Basement, kitchen/dining, living room, master bed+bathroom, spare bedroom... if I recall correctly.

If the ecobee will tie in the ductless, I'll go that route. I forgot to nab the model # on the thing, it's a Fujitsu (I think) that's only a couple years old.
 
And the zone wiring is stupid easy - 24V + heating call. It's done with 4 wire telephone cable so I can add a C wire easily, thankfully.
 
gee said:
Yup. Infloor radiant heat throughout the house, spread across 5 zones. Basement, kitchen/dining, living room, master bed+bathroom, spare bedroom... if I recall correctly.

If the ecobee will tie in the ductless, I'll go that route. I forgot to nab the model # on the thing, it's a Fujitsu (I think) that's only a couple years old.
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check first. Mitsubishis generally have a built in normal thermostat interface. Others might require a module.
 
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